TUMMY ACHE MAGAZINE VOL.3, THE LAZY ISSUE

Tummy Ache Magazine Embraces the Politics of Doing Nothing in Vol. 3: The Lazy Issue Tummy Ache Magazine, the independent publication dedicated to encouraging emotional honesty, launches their laziest issue yet. The Lazy Issue (launching April 3rd) delves into the fear, shame, and liberatory potential of doing absolutely nothing. Long framed as a moral failing, laziness is a label wielded against the sick, the working class, the racialised, and the marginalised. Under capitalism, to be called lazy is to be cast out — unworthy, unproductive, undesirable. This issue asks: what does it mean to embrace laziness, not as failure, but as refusal? Featuring work from artists and writers, such as Sophie K. Rosa, Tolu Agbelusi and Catherine Cohen, this issue interrogates the fear and fetishisation of doing nothing, The Lazy Issue unpicks the ways laziness has been pathologised — from classism and racism to ableism — and explores what happens when we step outside the logic of productivity entirely. With Tummy Ache’s focus on mental health and social critique, Vol. 3 is both a provocation and a space for rest — a reminder that exhaustion is not a personal flaw, but a structural consequence. In a world where our worth is tied to our output, laziness might just be a radical act. In this issue: Sophie K. Rosa asserts the destabilising potential of centring laziness in our daily lives, Samatha Friedman writes of the alarming rate at which people are turning to ChatGPT for therapy and self-proclaimed lazy girl, Catherine Cohen, divulges her routine, which consists of laying around and “jerking off.” Additionally editor Anna Morrissey’s interview with poet and educator Tolu Agbelusi delineates how a top-down engagement in laziness impairs the most powerless in society. “Laziness has been a story for a very long time,” explains Agbelusi, “it has been a story that has been told by the oppressor of the oppressed.” Editor: Anna Morrissey